Being the amazing, true-to-life adventures and (very likely) misadventures of a writer who seeks to take his education, activism and seemingly boundless energy to North Minneapolis, (NoMi) to help with a process of turning a rapidly revitalizing neighborhood into something approaching Urban Utopia. I am here to be near my child. From 02/08 to 06/15 this blog pushed free speech to the envelope, so others could take heart and speak unafraid. Email me at hoffjohnw@gmail.com

Sunday, August 9, 2009

More Images Of Morris "Cuckoo" Klock's Slummy Building At 1422 Golden Valley Road...

Photos By John Hoff

Morris "Cuckoo" Klock and some other members of the Klock family are suing Council Member Don Samuels, or are they giving him a ringing political endorsement? No, wait, it's both: in the Fifth Ward, getting sued by a scumlord like Morris "Cuckoo" Klock is something like a political endorsement.

Well, I realized I had a few more photos taken with the special crap-coated lens......and I should share those photos.

HA! Kidding. I've been wanting to buy the special crap-coated lens for a long time, but I'm too frugal. Usually I make do by picking up a piece of crap from the yard of a slumlord's property and putting it over the lens to produce that "extra crappy" photo effect, like the images above.

Second photo: this image of curtains all askew (if that even is a curtain, and not some kind of frilly fitted sheet hung over the window) reminds me, oddly enough, of certain touching moments with my son. That is to say, my son when he was a bit younger and more easily creeped out by old buildings. If he saw a curtain like that, I know just what he'd do. He'd pause and look for a long moment, and then he would ask, oh-so-innocently, "Dad, how old is this building? Do you think anybody ever DIED in this building?"

And I'd have to tell him what I always tell him in moments like that: "Alex, there's no proof that a ghostie ever killed or hurt anybody, ever, anywhere at any time in all of human history. FEAR THE LIVING. It's living people, not ghosts who will hurt you and do bad things."

In the next image: protection against the living. Boards over the basement windows so crackheads can't break inside and steal, for example, copper pipes. Not that I'm criticizing Mr. Klock about THAT. The boards are clearly serving a needed purpose. But why do we have yet another boarded building? The evidence will tend to prove Mr. Klock couldn't run his building very well, certainly not like "clockwork."

In the last photo...so sad to see something like this. Apparently, at one time there was some sort of cool decorative brickwork on the front of the building. Well, it's not there any more.